Whisky Wisdom
by HecateA
Summary: Just as Teddy starts to think that doing his family proud would be impossible, someone too stubborn to stay in bed stills his wavering. Oneshot.


**Author's Note: **Last time I wrote about Teddy being a Healer, people seemed to really like it in the reviews so I thought I'd throw you guys some more. You can think of this as a prequel to _A Good Place_ or as a stand-alone story; it works as both. Enjooooy!

**Disclaimer: **The following characters belong to J.K. Rowling, and this story derives from her original works, storylines, and world. Please do not sue me, I can barely pay tuition.

**Warnings: **NA

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**Wigtown Wanderers, Chaser 2**

**Prompt:** Three of Wands — Reversed: Obstacles, Delays, Frustration

**Additional prompts:** [Character] Minerva McGonagall, [object] Flaks, [Location] St. Mungo's

**Word count: **1706

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**Whisky Wisdom **

Teddy rubbed at his eyes, which was a convenient way not to look at what felt like the millionth rejection letter he'd received from the hospital's board. He knew what to expect at this point. _Dear Healer Lupin, _it would start. Other key phrases he'd learned to expect included "time and consideration" or "narrow issue indirectly linked to our institution" and "maximizing talent and hospital resources."

They all brought him to the same answer: no. No, St. Mungo's would not allocate additional funds to his research. No, St. Mungo's would not create a new specialty wing. No, St. Mungo's would not take on the kind of burden that he was suggesting. And while the board appreciated his work, the letters always seemed to ask, ever so politely, that he stop bringing up this topic they wanted nothing to do with.

Teddy balled up the rejection letter and threw it. It bounced off the doorway of his office door unceremoniously and flopped onto the ground. He'd wanted that to be more satisfying than it had been.

He sighed and leaned back, hiding his face in his hands. He had an amazingly brilliant wife, a beautiful baby daughter, and another on the way. Now would be a good time for him to stop asking for the impossible, to focus on maintaining his stellar reputation and kindling his growing career.

But this felt like an itch you knew would draw blood but couldn't stop clawing at. He didn't know where to turn to now, but he only felt itchier and itchier inside his own skin.

"Whiskey?" a voice offered.

He lowered his hands and had to blink twice to process the sight of Minerva McGonagall in his doorframe, sitting in a wheelchair with a tartan thrown over her knees. Her long grey hair had been braided over one of her shoulders and she was holding a flask in his direction.

It was difficult for Teddy to determine which part of the picture was the most out of place.

"Professor McGonagall?" he couldn't stop himself from getting to his feet.

"Please, Mr Lupin. You graduated from Hogwarts years ago," his old headmistress said, wheeling herself into the room. When McGonagall had been admitted with a bad case of Billywig's Pneumonia, word had spread quickly amongst the hospital staff—which included many of her old students.

Still, he worked on the Magical Diseases floor and hadn't seen her at all.

"What are you doing here?" Teddy asked.

"Being a very bad and very restless patient who has yet to kick the habit of wandering at night to clear her thoughts," McGonagall said. "I thought it was quite late at night for someone to still be working. Then, after looking in, I thought you looked like you could use some of this."

She offered the flask again. Teddy blinked twice.

"You're a patient here, you shouldn't be drinking that," he said mechanically.

"Oh, don't pretend you don't still think of me as your old headmistress or that you can tell me what to do," McGonagall argued back. "Besides, I'm an old woman far from home; let me keep the few nice things I have."

She took a swig and gave him one last look before tucking the flask away again

"Now," McGonagall said. "Why are you so upset?"

"I'm not upset."

"How many children do you think I've watched grow up, Mr Lupin?" McGonagall asked. "I know when I'm being lied to."

"I'm not upset," Teddy said. "I'm… frustrated."

"Why?" McGonagall asked. "Because you've thrown all this paper on your office floor and made a mess?"

"That's the end product, I suppose," Teddy said. He leaned his elbows on his desk. "The hospital's board just turned down my third application to secure funding for and open a lycanthropy clinic."

McGonagall arched an eyebrow. "And why is that?"

"They're worried about the hospital's image," Teddy said, running a hand through his hair. Today he'd given it a little bit more length than usual, and his fingers twisted into the curls. "It's got to be that. They don't… they don't understand that providing a safe space for werewolves to recover from the full moon won't _encourage _lycanthropy, it'll normalize it. And once it's normalized, people will be able to take care of themselves and each other better—and we're a hospital! We should be at the centre of that."

"That does indeed sound accurate," McGonagall conceded.

Teddy sighed, rubbing at his eyes. "I cited St. Mungo's Mission Statement, and multiple reports about how unequipped to deal with lycanthrope patients all the other wards were. I got so many signatures from werewolves who said they would benefit from a safe place like this. I cited all these Ministry documents and reports from the last thirty years, I was neck-deep in parchment. I thought I was getting the hang of writing these proposals, I thought I would finally get somewhere. But I didn't even get a hearing with the board. They couldn't have cared less."

Teddy sunk into his chair further, shaking his head.

His eyes scanned the tattoos lining his forearm, which depicted the four primary phases of the moon. The ink outlining the full moon was growing darker as it approached. Every time that moon flared up, Teddy was full of anxiety for the handful of patients he'd had who had disclosed their lycanthropy to him. Some of them had known his father personally and wanted him to know, others simply knew of his blood status and assumed he'd be able to help them in their various troubles and causes.

But he couldn't. He really, really couldn't. He just had to hope that they would be okay, and what kind of help was that? The day after the full moon, all of them would check in with him and if any ugly bruises or broken bones had come up, he would do his best. But that wasn't sustainable and it wasn't good enough.

He had so, so hoped to have this set up by winter. That way he could keep some of his patients off the streets and fed throughout England's harshest season—but now with this delay… This was perhaps the most frustrating part: he was trying to keep people safe and healthy. How hard was that? How could anyone object to that?

"It seems to me that they are simply being resistant to change now," McGonagall said.

"They are," Teddy said. "They're afraid. And that's the thing I don't know how to get past."

McGonagall was quiet for a moment. "Your father often asked that same question, as I recall it."

Teddy suddenly focused on her more. McGonagall met his eye and held his gaze as she went on.

"Your grandparents also wanted to change the world—they caused quite a scandal when word got out that they were engaged," McGonagall said. "And your mother, well she became an Auror to do good, in the best way that she could imagine. You, Mr Lupin, come from a family of people who do not get discouraged and push for change. I'm an old woman; trust me when I say that the world in which you live now would have been unimaginable before the son of a werewolf grew up to become a successful Healer. I myself wouldn't have believed it, and I saw that father of yours grow up into quite the man. Of course, your mother's absolute courage and openness in marrying him and insisting on love had a part to play here as well. All of this nostalgia to say, Mr Lupin, that you come from a family of people whose very existences warrant change and shake the earth. Think of what you could do if you just keep trying."

Teddy took a deep breath. "It's slow. This is so slow, and it's big, and I don't know what thread to pull to get us started, and..."

"I didn't say it was easy, did I?" McGonagall said.

"No, ma'am," he admitted.

"Right, then," McGonagall said. "So what will you do now that there's a clear obstacle in sight? And how in Merlin's name do you think you'll solve it if you've scrunched up your rejection letter—the one thing you can hold them accountable for?"

Teddy grinned crookedly and got up, sheepishly going around his desk to pick up the scrunched-up letter on the floor. He sat on his desk, unfurling it to read it again. He looked up briefly.

"Professor, you should be in bed..."

"Make me," she responded.

Teddy turned back to the letter. At least she wasn't drinking anymore. But rereading those words, part of him wished that _he _was.

"Their phrasing..." Teddy trailed off, rereading a line. "They're… they're subtle about it, but they constantly imply that lycanthropy doesn't qualify as an illness that they should treat. They're falling back on the curse-based model, which stigmatizes werewolves in the first place."

"Good," McGonagall said. "And what will you do with that?"

"It's well-documented that it's an illness, the same as Dragon Pox," Teddy said.

He knew that, because he'd written about it lengthily himself. He had written essays filled with epistemological data, had reconstructed werewolf lineages and genealogy with oral histories, had written pages and pages establishing how isolation, criminalization, and heavy policing made bad situations worse and unsafe… Publishers occasionally picked them up, circulated them amongst Healers. But…

"This is willful ignorance," Teddy said at last. It wasn't a nice thing to say about the place where he worked, the place he loved, but he knew it was true. "No amount of evidence can change that. Except…"

"Except what?"

"I know my mum didn't know anything until she met my dad," Teddy said. "I—I don't know a lot about them, but I know that. And she… she wasn't a bad person."

"Not at all," McGonagall said.

"She wasn't. And so maybe it's… People. Everyday people don't know. Maybe it's time to forego St. Mungo's entirely. To talk to the people around the hospital, to get their support…" Teddy said.

"It won't be easy," McGonagall said.

"It doesn't have to be," Teddy said. "It has to work, that's all. If people start thinking about people as people, if they start thinking about why it is that werewolves are unwell and unsafe, if they stop thinking of this as something to be afraid and hushed about…"

His old headmistress became secondary as he dove deeper and deeper into his options, rambling. He'd go to _The Prophet, The Quibbler, _the radio if he had to. If the hospital wouldn't listen to him or his patients, he would have to make them listen to a crowd. He'd worried about the repercussions of this, of what would happen if he broke protocol. Maybe it was time to find out.

Teddy just then realized that he'd been rambling. McGonagall looked at him and nodded, satisfied.

"Do you really think I can do it, professor?" Teddy asked sheepishly. He felt silly and childish for asking it—he was a grown adult, a decorated Healer, a family man…

But his eyes flickered down to the photograph of his parents that he kept on his desk, not too far from the one of his own little family, or the one of him and his grandma when he'd become a Healer. They smiled at him like they always did, frozen in time so far away. He wondered, not for the first time, what they would think. Teddy didn't know them, not really. He didn't owe them anything, he hadn't made them any promises, he had no idea what their hopes and dreams for him had been. But he wanted them to be proud, because they were good people. And if there was something Teddy wanted to be, the one promise he could make to the universe, it was to be good.

"I would not have offered to waste my best whiskey on you if I didn't," she nodded.

And that was the most honest answer Teddy could have gotten.

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**Stacked with: **MC4A; Shipping War; Seriously Important (Not); Animal Verses

**Individual Challenge(s): **More Than England; Gryffindor MC; Hufflepuff MC; Medic MC; Seeds; Golden Times; Old Shoes; Themes and Things A (Change); Themes and Things B (Protection); Themes and Things C (Photograph); Advice from the Mug; True Colours; Rian-Russo Inversion; In a Flash; Yellow Ribbon; Yellow Ribbon Redux; Two Cakes!

**Representation(s): **Werewolves

**Bonus challenge(s): **Creature Feature; Second Verse (Odd Feathers); Chorus (Nightingale)

**Tertiary bonus challenge: **Oath; Orator

**Word Count: **

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_**Shipping Wars**_

**Ship (Team): **Nymphadora Tonks and Remus Lupin (Technicolour Moon)

**List (Prompt): **Summer Big List (Promise)


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